


coming up for air

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: ANGST!!! ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING!!!, Confessions of love, M/M, unrequited love SIKE it's not unrequited but it sure as hell is love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 14:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18390311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: Crowley sighed. He loved Aziraphale. God, he loved him, loved him enough to think that word even if it burned like a raging comet across the back of his brain. He loved him like gravity loved fallen angels, loved him like God loved dice.





	coming up for air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [regencysnuffboxes (malicegeres)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/gifts).



“I’m in love with you,” Aziraphale confessed, his hands curled gently around his teacup, looking at Crowley with gentle blue eyes. “That’s all.”

“What,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale half-shrugged, a small smile at the corner of his lips, and was quiet.

Crowley continued to stare at him. Aziraphale’s expression changed and he suddenly dropped his gaze, dipping his head, so Crowley ended up hyperfocusing on one particular curl of his hair. “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “You’re in love with me.”

“Yes,” confirmed Aziraphale, a trifle testily, “And I thought you ought to know.” He rubbed a finger into the wood grain of the table. “I actually--” He cleared his throat. “I actually thought you might feel the same way about me.”

“I don’t--” Crowley shook his head. “I--don’t--”

“You don’t,” Aziraphale repeated, his voice calm, as if he’s just making sure Crowley means what he’s saying and isn’t just stammering blankly. “You don’t.”

“I don’t,” Crowley stammered blankly, because they’ve been friends. They’ve been on-and-off for six thousand years and they’ve disagreed and they’ve fought, even, but they _have_ been friends, and they’ve--been friends. Friends. “We’re friends,” he said stupidly. “And I--” he swallowed. “That’s what I want.”

There’s a long silence in which neither met the other’s eyes, and Aziraphale nodded. “Friends, then,” he said, and he held his hand out as if to shake on it, but Crowley still wouldn’t look at him. He pushed himself back from the table, putting physical distance between them, and then, abruptly, stood.

“Wait,” said Aziraphale, and he held his arm out as if to touch him, then realised he couldn’t justify doing that anymore, not when Crowley was pulling away, stiff and angry. “Please don’t leave,” he urged, but he was already saying it to Crowley’s back as the demon strode away from him, all the way to the door. Aziraphale stared as Crowley turned to look back at him, and there was something like…

Something like _hurt_ in his eyes.

And then the door swung shut behind him, slamming loud enough to force dust off some of the shelves.

Aziraphale sat back down. His tea was cold. He put his head in his hands and put his elbows on the table, and, for the first time in a century, didn’t care.

 

Crowley, for his part, was so flustered by the whole experience that he helped three old couples cross the street and accidentally prevented a bank robbery.

And that’s when Hell got involved.

It wasn’t the bank robbery--not _really._ It was just that a couple Barons of Hell had been arranging it for several months, pulling delicate strings to get the right people to deposit the right amounts into the right vaults on the right days, planting the idea--and the guns--into the right robbers’ heads and hands. So when Crowley showed up so dazed that he, out of sheer habit more than anything else, turned the guns into water pistols, those Barons of Hell got peeved. Naturally, they complained to a couple Viscounts of Hell, who complained to a couple Earls of Hell, who complained to a couple Marquesses of Hell, who complained to a couple Dukes of Hell, one of which was Ligur, and long story short, Crowley was in what he would have called Big Fucking Trouble if he hadn’t been too busy screaming to talk.

Hell, for all its faults, was ruthlessly fair--that’s kind of the purpose of the place, after all--so Crowley knew he had to have a bucket of holy water dumped on his own head, but his anticipation of the pain didn’t make the pain any lesser. And it didn’t help that Ligur grinned through the whole affair. And it _certainly_ didn’t help that, when they ‘healed’ him after--they had to, because otherwise the sufferance would be too brief--he was still too badly injured to walk. He didn’t know what he looked like, but he could picture it: blood caked up his face and matted into his hair, fingernails split down the middle, left arm fully dislocated from when he’d tried and failed to save at least one of his hands from the water. He limped away until Hastur kicked him, mocked him with his old name, and he was forced to crawl. He would have heard the taunts better if not for the fact that one of his eardrums had burst.

When Hell finally spat him up, dirty and alone, he summoned all the remains of his strength, stood, and looked around, cradling his arm. He was right in the middle of the borough, right where he’d been pulled under, which could have been mercy but was most likely laziness, but that at least meant, he thought as he hid his eyes from some unconcerned passersby, he knew his way back to--

His way back to--

Aziraphale.

Aziraphale, who had just--

Crowley sighed. He loved him. _God, he loved him_ , loved him enough to think that word even if it burned like a raging comet across the back of his brain. He loved him like gravity loved fallen angels, loved him like God loved dice. So he sauntered-stumbled-staggered right, then left, then right, down the blurry, crowded streets towards the bookshop’s door. Three wrong turns later, he was there, fumbling with the doorknob like a madman with a hand so burnt it was more bone than skin. When he finally, frantically forced the door, Aziraphale was on the other side.

They locked eyes.

 

Aziraphale saw him in the doorway, backlit by the evening, thrumming with pain. There were sooty slits across his chest, as if inch-long claws had raked him, and strips of his skin had been peeled back to reveal seething muscle below. Tatters in his shirt revealed black burns across huge swaths of his body. One of his feet was twisted inward, and his whole left arm hung wrong. He was panting, his chest rising and falling with unnatural swiftness. He raised his eyes to Aziraphale’s. They had been crying blood.

Aziraphale almost screamed.

Crowley lurched across the threshold, and Aziraphale, all grace gone, leapt forward to catch him before he could fall. Crowley twisted in his grip, kicked the door shut behind him, and pushed Aziraphale’s chin up so their eyes met again. “Do you love me,” he rasped, grasping the back of Aziraphale’s head and jerking them bodily together. “Do you love me,” he repeated, pressed flush against him, one hand fisted painfully in Aziraphale’s shirt, one hand on the side of his face. “Do you love me, angel?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale managed, red rising in his cheeks. “Of course, of course, my dear b--”

Crowley kissed him.

Aziraphale stiffened in surprise and leaned forward, and Crowley just kissed him harder. The angel relaxed, closed his eyes, let a hand come up and cup Crowley’s jaw, slowing and guiding the kiss (because Crowley, for all his passion, clearly didn’t know what he was doing, poor thing). Crowley practically moaned into him, swaying on his unsteady feet, kissed him and pulled back and kissed him again, and again, and again, until he just gasped and fell forward, wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders, and went still.

Aziraphale thought it was a very long, very ungainly, and very unpracticed embrace until he realised, looking down at the demon wrapped tightly around him, that Crowley had physically passed out. He ran his hands gently through the demon’s hair, carding some of the knots out of it, and passed a hand down his back as best he could, closing one of the gashes, at least. Slowly, he maneuvered the two of them to the back room and, as gently as he could, deposited Crowley on the creaky couch. He hummed as he ran his hands over the demon’s chest, healing what he could and disinfecting what he couldn’t.

And then he lit a few candles, sat down with a book, and waited for Crowley to wake up. He hoped it wouldn’t be another hundred years, but, all things considered, _War and Peace_ could probably last him that long if he stretched it, so he stretched it.

In fact, it was only about sixty pages before Crowley cracked open his eyes and spoke. As soon as Aziraphale saw him stir, he shut his book and knelt beside him. “Are you all right?” he asked, watching the Crowley’s pupils jitter as they became accustomed to light again and resisting the urge to brush his hair out of his face.

He expected some sort of witty, sardonic quip about angels or cars or couches, something along the lines of ‘Now I know how the Bentley feels’ or ‘this bookshop is hotter than Hell.’ Instead, Crowley blinked sleepily, coughed once, and whispered something Aziraphale didn’t quite catch.

“Pardon?” the angel asked, leaning closer.

Crowley coughed again, took Aziraphale’s hand in a surprisingly certain grip, and repeated himself.

“I'm in love with you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this fic in my head for a while and i'm really glad i got it out so it stops replaying in my mind and causing endless agony. title taken from the song i had on repeat while writing this, "anna sun" by walk the moon. fun fact: anna sun is not the singer's girlfriend or ex-girlfriend but rather his college sociology professor.
> 
> endless thanks to user witching for their encouragement in writing this! also endless thanks to the girl who made out with me the other night because i had been waiting to write this fic until i'd actually made out with someone


End file.
